WEBVTT

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Some years ago, my young
daughter had an operation.

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Quite a simple operation
about which we tend to laugh.

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But, she was so young that
the effect of it on her

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was most intense,
certainly in my eyes.

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And I visited her shortly after
the operation with her mother.

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She was still under
the anesthetic.

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She was still obviously in
pain although completely

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unconscious.

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And, in the same room
there was an old lady

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dying near the window.

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And it suddenly
seemed to me that here

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was a diagram, almost, of
the stages of the process.

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Especially as it
encounters the enemy,

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the idea of unjust punishment,
innocent suffering, pain

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and so on.

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And I saw these three women,
the daughter, the mother,

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and this old lady, as almost The
Three Graces of human existence

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on a somewhat an ugly light.

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The poem is called Our Mother.

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Tall windows full of sea light,
two women and a child in tears.

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Silent among screens
and flowers, the ward

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a quiet zone of air.

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The girl whimpers in bed remote
under the anesthetic still.

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She sleeps on her new knowledge,
a bride with bowels burning

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and disarrayed.

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She dreams a red Gorgon mask,
warped in the steel kidney

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dish.

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The tender offals of her core
worming around the raw stare.

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Her mother watches, struck dumb.

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Tears of recognition run for
the stranger, daughter, self,

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on whom in fascination
her eyes feed.

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As mine on her, a
revenant, a rain

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worn delicate stone shape
that has looked long

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into that other face direct.

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In the next bed, dying of age,
the carrier of all our harm

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turns on us an emptiness of
open mouth and damp eyes.

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All three women, two in my
care, the third beyond all care,

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in tears.

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Living, dying.

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I meet their stare
everywhere and cannot move.

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[APPLAUSE]

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